Precious and Grace Read online

  Violet Sephotho had been at the Botswana Secretarial College at the same time as Mma Makutsi. Their respective attitudes towards the college could not have been more different: for Mma Makutsi the college represented the Parnassus to which she had long aspired—the institution that would deliver her from her life of poverty and struggle and equip her for a career in an office. For that she was profoundly and unconditionally grateful. She was completely committed to her studies the day they began; she never missed a lecture, and always occupied a seat in the front row; she completed every exercise and assignment on time and absorbed every piece of advice given by her tutors. At lectures she listened in respectful silence, writing everything down in the blue-bound notebooks that cost more than she could really afford—the purchase of a new notebook meant no lunch for a week; buying a textbook meant the forgoing of transport for at least a month. And when she graduated, on that unforgettable day, amidst the ululations of the proud aunts, she swore to herself that she would never forget the debt of gratitude she owed to the college and its staff.

  Violet Sephotho felt none of this loyalty. She had taken up her place at the college because nothing else had turned up. Her examination results at school were indifferent, and had she applied to the University of Botswana she would have been summarily rejected. She might have secured a place on a vocational course, perhaps being able to train as a nursing auxiliary in a clinic or as a hospitality assistant in the hotel trades school, but both of these involved commitment and willingness to work, which she simply did not have. For Violet, the Botswana Secretarial College was distinctly beneath her dignity—it was a place more suited to dim provincial nobodies like Grace Makutsi than to the likes of her. The college lecturers were, in her view, a sad bunch—people who had obviously not found real jobs in commerce or industry and who were content to spend their time drumming useless information into the heads of young women who would never be more than the second-rate occupants of dead-end jobs.

  Mma Makutsi had been scandalised by Violet’s behaviour. She found it hard to believe that anybody could so blatantly paint her nails during accountancy lectures, blowing ostentatiously on her handiwork to dry it more rapidly even while the lecturer was explaining the principles of double-entry book-keeping. Nor could she believe that anybody would keep up a running conversation with like-minded companions, discussing the merits of various men, while no less a person than the vice-principal of the college tried to demonstrate how a properly devised system of filing could save a lot of trouble and anxiety in the future.

  Violet eventually graduated on the same day as Mma Makutsi, but while the latter covered herself in glory and was singled out by the principal herself in her address, Violet scraped past with a bare fifty per cent, the lowest pass mark possible, and only awarded, everybody suspected, because the college authorities could not face the prospect of Violet repeating the course and being on their books for another six months.

  In the years that followed, Violet Sephotho lost no opportunity to put down or decry Mma Makutsi. And when Mma Makutsi was taken on by the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency, she transferred her venom to Mma Ramotswe and the agency in general.

  “The so-called No. 1 so-called Ladies’ so-called Detective Agency,” Violet publicly sneered. “No. 1 Disaster, more likely, with that Grace—I call her Graceless!—Makutsi from somewhere up in the sticks. Bobonong, I believe—what a place! And that stupid fat lady who calls herself Precious but is really just a big waste of space, thinking she can solve people’s problems! Far better go to a decent witch doctor and get him to sell you some powder than take your issues to that dump! Boring! Big time!”

  Mma Ramotswe was aware of all this, and bore it with patience. She had always believed that people who were nasty or unkind to others were only like that because there was something wrong in their lives, and that people who had something wrong in their lives were not to be despised or hated, but were to be pitied. So although Violet Sephotho was in one sense an enemy, this was not of Mma Ramotswe’s making and she would gladly have had it otherwise. Mma Makutsi was not of this view. She thought that Violet Sephotho was the way she was because that was how she was ordained to be.

  “You cannot make a jackal into a hyena,” said Mma Makutsi. “We are what we are. That is just the way it is.”

  “But sometimes we can change,” said Mma Ramotswe. “That is well known.”

  “I do not think so, Mma,” said Mma Makutsi. “And by the way, Mma Ramotswe, when you say that something is well known, I think that you are just saying what you think. Then you say that it is well known so that people will not argue with you.”

  “That’s not true,” said Mma Ramotswe. “But let us not argue, Mma, because I believe it’s time for tea and the more time you spend arguing, the less tea you can drink.”

  Mma Makutsi smiled. “Now that, Mma, I think, is certainly well known.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE DOG WAS ALMOST LATE

  THOUGHTS ABOUT FRIENDS and colleagues could—and did—occupy the entire journey from Zebra Drive to the offices of the No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. But now, as she parked her white van behind the building they shared with Tlokweng Road Speedy Motors, Mma Ramotswe stopped thinking about the people in her life and began to contemplate the tasks of the day ahead. There were several complicated invoices to draw up, and that, she thought, would take the entire morning. Some weeks ago, at Mma Makutsi’s instigation, the agency had introduced a new system of calculating fees. In the past they had simply charged what they thought a reasonable sum—often, Mma Makutsi observed, on the low side. This was based on the complexity of the enquiry and a rough—indeed, very rough—idea of how much time the matter had taken. Few clients had complained about this, but Mma Makutsi had decided that such a system was no longer acceptable in an age of transparency, when people wanted to know exactly what they were being charged for.

  “The days of just thinking of a figure are over,” she pronounced. “These days, people charge by the hour—by the minute, in many cases. That is the way the world is going. Itemised billing is what they call it, Mma.”

  Mma Ramotswe had not been enthusiastic. “I do not like those detailed bills. ‘For answering the telephone, 50 pula,’ and so on. That is not the way things were done in the old Botswana.”

  “But the old Botswana is no more, Mma,” retorted Mma Makutsi. “This is the new Botswana now. You cannot live in the past.”

  Mma Ramotswe wanted to challenge her on that. Why, she wanted to ask, could one not live in the past? If enough people were determined to live in the past, then surely that would keep the past alive. You could go to an old-fashioned hairdresser who braided hair in the way in which they used to braid hair in the past; you could go to a doctor who dressed and behaved as doctors did in your childhood, wearing a white coat and carrying a stethoscope, as doctors used to do; you could patronise a butcher who sold old-fashioned cuts of meat and then wrapped them up in brown paper parcels and tied these parcels neatly up with white string, as all butchers used to be taught to do; you could go to a bank where there was an old-fashioned bank manager who actually knew your name, as bank managers once did…

  But she kept these thoughts to herself. Had she expressed them, she was sure that Mma Makutsi would have made much of it and gone on at great length about modern practices and the need to be competitive. On that point—the need for competitiveness—Mma Ramotswe had difficulty in working out just with whom they needed to compete.

  “We actually have no competitors, when it comes down to it, Mma,” she had once said. “We are the only detective agency in Botswana—certainly the only one run by ladies. So who is there to compete with? The Bank of Botswana? The national airline?”

  Mma Makutsi had looked pained at the levity of these remarks. “It doesn’t matter if there’s no actual competition,” she said. “Competitiveness is a state of mind, Mma. It shows that you are aware of the client’s interest. It is all about efficiency and value for money
.”

  “I think we are very good value for money,” countered Mma Ramotswe. “Sometimes we do not even charge anything at all. I have sent out many bills like that: ‘Grand Total, 0 pula.’ What better value for money can there be?”

  “To somebody who has not had commercial training, perhaps. No disrespect, Mma, but when I was at the Botswana Secretarial College we learned about some of these very complicated matters. Some people have not had that opportunity—not that I’m saying it’s their fault, Mma. No, I’m not saying anything like that.”

  In the end, Mma Ramotswe had agreed to the new billing system and had been instructed by Mma Makutsi as to how to keep a note of every moment spent on a client’s affairs.

  “So if you are thinking about a case, Mma—just thinking—you should still bill the client for that.”

  Mma Ramotswe expressed astonishment. “Should I write: ‘For thinking about your case for 18 minutes’? Should I write that sort of thing?”

  Mma Makutsi nodded. “Yes. But perhaps it’s best not to use the word thinking. Some people would imagine that thinking is free. So you should put something like: ‘For consideration of your affairs.’ That is a very useful expression. Or you might write, ‘For reviewing your affairs.’ That is even better.”

  Mma Ramotswe looked thoughtful. “But what about drinking tea? Let’s say that I want to think about a case and I decide to do so over a cup of tea. Can I charge for that? Can I write: ‘For drinking tea, 50 pula’?”

  Mma Makutsi laughed. “Oh really, Mma Ramotswe! No, that would not do. The client would say, ‘Why should I pay them for drinking tea?’ ”

  “So what should I write?”

  “If you are talking to me about it while we’re drinking tea, then you should write ‘Case conference.’ That is a good way of describing it.” She looked defiantly at Mma Ramotswe. “I am not making all this up, Mma. This is the way it’s done these days. I’m simply bringing you into the present—that’s all.”

  “What was wrong with the past?” asked Mma Ramotswe. She intended the question seriously. There were too many people who took the view that the past was bad, that we should rid ourselves of all traces of it as soon as possible. But the past was not bad; some of it may have been less than perfect—there had been cruelties then that we had done well to get rid of—but there had also been plenty of good things. There had been the old Botswana ways, the courtesy and the kindness; there had been the attitude that you should find time for other people and not always be in a desperate rush; there had been the belief that you should listen to other people, should talk to them, rather than spend all your time fiddling with your electronic gadgets; there had been the view that it was a good thing to sit under a tree sometimes and look up at the sky and think about cattle or pumpkins or non-electric things like that.

  But an argument of that sort would never prevail against the march of modernisation, and so Mma Ramotswe just thought these things, rather than expressed them. Nor did she put up much of a fight against the new billing system, which had all the authority of the modern behind it—and the endorsement too, it would seem, of the Botswana Secretarial College. And so her day started that morning with the making up of a bill of the new sort. For taking instructions…for writing a letter of enquiry (2.5 pages)…for attending for consultation with client (25 minutes)…It was tedious work, and by the time they were ready for mid-morning tea, Mma Ramotswe was looking forward to a break. And it was then that Fanwell came in from the garage and made his unexpected announcement.

  “I have found a dog, Mma Ramotswe.”

  Fanwell said this as he came through the door, wiping the grease off his hands with a piece of the absorbent blue paper that Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni had introduced for such purposes.

  Mma Makutsi had just turned on the kettle and was laying out the teacups in descending order—Mma Ramotswe’s, her own, Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni’s, Fanwell’s, and finally Charlie’s. Mma Ramotswe had two cups—her everyday one, white china and nondescript, and her more formal one, with a portrait of Queen Elizabeth II under a crown motif, now faded; Mma Makutsi herself made do with only one, a green cup with matching saucer. She looked up sharply as Fanwell spoke.

  “A dog?” she asked. “A stray dog?”

  Fanwell tossed the used blue paper into the bin, missed, and bent down to pick it up.

  “Yes, it’s a stray dog.” He frowned. “Or, maybe not. How can you tell?”

  “Stray dogs look very thin,” said Mma Makutsi. “They often have no collar. They are very ill-looking dogs, usually.”

  “I don’t think this dog is a stray dog, then,” said Fanwell. “He is not so thin that you can see his ribs. He looks as if he has had enough to eat.”

  The water in the electric kettle started to boil. Mma Makutsi spooned tea into the pot.

  “Where did you find this dog?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

  “I saw him on the road. In fact…” Fanwell hesitated. “In fact, I ran over him. Charlie and I were coming back from fetching spares and he ran across the road. It wasn’t my fault…”

  “These dogs are always doing that sort of thing,” said Mma Makutsi. “Phuti ran over one the other day. It came running out of a driveway and started trying to bite the wheels on his car. He couldn’t help but run over it. Stupid dog.”

  “Some dogs can’t resist chasing cars,” said Fanwell. “Those dogs never last very long.”

  Mma Ramotswe was interested to find out what had happened.

  “I felt a bit of a bump,” said Fanwell. “So I put on the brakes and got out of the truck to see what had happened. I thought I might have burst a tyre, or something like that. But it was this dog. I’d hit him.”

  “And?”

  “And he was under the car—not squashed or flattened or anything like that. He was just sitting there under the car, looking a bit dazed. So I got him out from under the truck—I had to drag him, but he didn’t seem to mind. I think one of his legs hurt a bit, as he yelped when I touched him there, but otherwise he was all right.”

  Mma Makutsi began to pour the tea. “He must have lived somewhere round there. I suppose he just walked home. We could find out where he lives—we could ask about.”

  Fanwell shook his head. “No, Mma. There are too many houses over there. He could come from anywhere.”

  This was greeted with silence. Mma Ramotswe glanced at Mma Makutsi. Although he was considerably more responsible than Charlie, Fanwell was vulnerable; he tended to get himself into difficult situations, sometimes through kindness, or, more frequently, through naïvety.

  “What did you do, Fanwell?” asked Mma Makutsi. “You didn’t…”

  Fanwell looked shifty.

  “Did you bring him back here?” asked Mma Ramotswe.

  Fanwell nodded. “I couldn’t leave him, Mma.”

  Mma Ramotswe sighed. “No, you’re right, Fanwell. If we run over something we can’t just walk away.” She paused. “Where is this dog now? Is he outside?”

  Fanwell pointed towards the door. “He’s out there.”

  “Then I suppose we’d better take a look at him,” said Mma Ramotswe.

  Fanwell led the dog in. He had improvised a collar for him out of a piece of old bicycle tube, cut and tied round the animal’s neck, and to this he had attached a piece of string folded double upon itself. The dog was medium-sized—of an indeterminate breed, but the characteristic ruffled hair along the backbone showed Ridgeback blood somewhere in his past. He had a rather ungainly snout, with folds of flesh merging into exposed black gums around the jaws. Several teeth protruded from the mouth, imparting a somewhat savage look. But the expression in his eyes was not hostile—nor was the frantic wagging of his tail as he entered the room, looked about, and immediately crossed the floor to nuzzle at Mma Makutsi’s feet.

  “He likes you, Mma,” said Fanwell, tugging at the string leash.

  In spite of herself, Mma Makutsi smiled. “He is a very odd-looking dog, Fanwell,” she said.

  Charlie
now appeared in the doorway. Spotting the dog, he clapped his hands enthusiastically. “So, you’ve all met Fanwell’s dog. The latest member of the agency staff.”

  “What’s that?” said Mma Makutsi.

  “Fanwell says that you’ll give the dog a job,” said Charlie. “If the police use dogs, then why can’t private detectives? Stands to reason, if you ask me.”

  Mma Makutsi crossed the room to hand Mma Ramotswe her cup of tea. “Nonsense,” she said. “An office is no place for a dog. And anyway, that dog is not Fanwell’s—it is a dog that was run over, that’s all. It can go back to its owner now.”

  Charlie shrugged. “Fanwell doesn’t know who that is, do you, Fanwell?”

  Fanwell scowled at Charlie. “I’m not quite sure. That’s why I’m looking after it.”

  “At your place?” asked Mma Makutsi. Fanwell lived with an uncle and his family in a small house in Old Naledi—a couple of rooms, Mma Makutsi believed. There would be barely enough room for the people in that house, let alone a dog.

  “I’m not sure,” said Fanwell. “I haven’t thought about it.”

  Mma Makutsi returned to her desk. She placed her teacup in front of her, contemplated it for a few moments, and then fixed Fanwell with a firm stare.

  “Fanwell,” she said, “when you picked up that dog, did you think about what’s involved in looking after a dog? Did you think about what you were going to do with it?”